Breathe Through This - a poem

Quietly walking along pathways into a Georgia sunset you can see the red clay

sprouting out from the earth, flooding the grass, and if you are like me, from a place

north of us, in Michigan, where snow was recently littering the earths, you might

not take notice of such things, with an inability to stroll in shorts in seventy-plus degree

weather. As sun lowers itself on the horizon and sky is taken into orange

hues, a simpler view of time is delivered, a freeze of the chaos that viruses produce

in the assault on screens, and social media pages. As spring encroaches just as viral

infections do too, and a groundhog never gave mention of this in its predictor shadows

when it was taken by scruff on its neck those so-many-weeks-ago.

To stroll serendipitous in a southern state is a unique experience in itself, while anxiety attacks

foreclosed on any ideas of travel, yet here I persist in my adventures of romance and education

and hopeful occupation. As air feels satisfying breathed deep in to nasal cavities, but pollen

rebukes me, and warns of allergy season, but that quiet, warm, and calm notions of nature

leave me falling slowly into the truth that we shall be fine. In God given atmosphere, clearing

up as we horde up all around the world, and pester each other for rolls of paper towel, and squirt

bottles of hand sanitize and wipes to disinfect, we can see on a stroll, on a walk, that there is still

a world about that was built to exist in beyond four walls of our castle confines.

Waking to a knowledge of humanity banding together, mostly, for sake of humanity is comforting,

more so than a notion of getting sick, and struggling with balancing acts of how to be safe,

and sane, and normal, when normalcy is lost, but it puts it all into perspective, as we sacrifice notions

of being typical in our everyday. But a walk, among red earth, is possibly serene enough

to seem heavenly, and a view to chaos is peppered with views of peacefulness, as a new normal

is born in all of us. If to distinguish our flames of fear we need pray, meditate, or sleep, let us do

those things, for we have all the time to panic, but very precious time to appreciate a home cooked

breakfast we haven't had in ages, cooked by our own hands, or hands of those who love us,

report your time in your calendar and remark, just how much you can get done just by shutting

off the noise of misery that emanates out of media megaphones.